"What I Wear Is Pants": Monasticism as "Lay" Spirituality in Merton's Later Life and Work

Patrick O'Connell

I n his correspondence with Rosemary Ruether, we find Thomas Merton making some rather disconcerting comments about his life as a hermit. The solitude he had sought for years as the fulfillment of his monastic vocation now seems to be presented virtually as a repudia­ tion of that vocation. On February 14, 1967, he writes, "I am in a posi­ tion where l am practically laicized and de-institutionalized, and living like all the other old bats who live alone in the hills in this part of the country and I feel like a human being again. My hermit life is ex­ pressly a lay life. I never wear the habit except when at the monastery and I try to be as much on my own as I can and like the people around the country."1 Three weeks later, he refers again to his '"secularized' existence as a hermit" and explains, "I am not only leading a more 'worldly' life (me and the rabbits), but am subtly infecting the monas­ tery with worldly ideas,"2 through, he may mean, his weekly talks to the community on political and literary topics. Such remarks may be interpreted as an expression of Merton's disillusion with institutional­ ized monastic life in general and with the Gethsemani community in particular, or as a rather disingenuous, even somewhat duplicitous, at­ tempt to justiiy his present vocation to a particularly fierce critic of

1. Thomas Merton, The Hidden Gro1111d of Love: Letters on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, ed. William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985) 501; the same letter is also found in Mary Tardiff, OP, ed., At Home in the World: The Letters of Tl1omas Merton and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995) 23. 2. Hidden Ground of Love, 505; At Home in the World, 38.

35 36 Patrick O'Connell "W1iat I Wear Is Pants" 37

monasticism.3 Both of these motives are no doubt present to some ex­ ousness, which is, however, not . . . a withdrawal, a denial. It is a tent. But I would like to propose that underlying the disillusion and/or mode of presence." He concludes his reflection by aligning monasti­ the defensiveness there is a more complex, and ultimately more satis­ cism with this stance rather than a more public, ecclesiastical witness: fying, explanation for Merton's use of this sort of language: his studies "Paradoxically, then, Bonhoeffer's mode of unnoticed presence in the and his own experience had convinced him that a "lay" spirituality world is basically monastic as opposed to the 'clerical' or 'priestly' was not only compatible with monasticism but from a certain per­ presence, which is official, draws attention to itself and issues its for­ spective was an integral part of monastic history and identity. mal message of institutional triumph."4 Thus if the term "lay" is con­ Such a proposal may initially strike one as illogical if not ab­ trasted not with "religious" but with "clerical," it would seem that surd: lay and monastic states would seem to be polar opposites, mu­ Merton is locating monasticism on the "lay" side of the division, where tually exclusive, and in one sense they certainly are. By definition the it is well situated, not incidentally, to enter into dialogue not only with vowed religious life is distinguished from the Jay, secular state, and the "secular" Christianity of a Bonhoeffer but with persons of other monks are religious par excellence. But "lay" can also be used to con­ faiths, or even of no religious faith at all. trast with "clerical," a state which is by no means identical with "reli­ gious," though in popular perception they are easily confused. Merton I himself makes note of the difference, and indicates its significance for a proper understanding of monastic life, in reflecting on Dietrich The foundation for this position is not merely eccentric or idio­ Bonhoeffer's Prison Letters, which he calls "very monastic in their syncratic personal preference or practice on Merton's part. It is a con­ own way." By this surprising statement he apparently means that clusion grounded in his study of monastic origins. He notes, "The monk Bonhoeffer's vision of "religionless Christianity," which does not pub­ was originally a layman (priests were exceptional) who lived alone in the licly call attention to itself, has a dimension of hiddenness comparable desert outside the framework of any institution, even of the Christian to the "desert" quality of monasticism. "His 'worldliness,"' Merton and Ecclesial institution."5 This statement should not be taken to imply continues, "can only be understood in the light of this 'monastic' seri- ' 4. Thomas Merton, A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-1965 (New York: 3. Though Ruether's criticism of monastic "withdrawal" is intense, particu­ Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988) 65-6; a slightly different version of this passage is found larly in the early letters to Merton (see the letter of early March, 1967 [Al Home in the in Thomas Merton, Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage­ World, 27-30]), in a generally overlooked article entitled "Monks and Marxists: A foumals, Volume Five: 1963-1965, ed. Robert E. Daggy, (San Francisco: HarperCollins, Look at the Catholic Left" (Christianity and Crisis, 33:7 [April 30, 1973] 75-9) she ex­ 1997) 129. ln Contemplation in a World of Action (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971), plicitly credits the "monastic spirituality of Thomas Merton" (along with Dorothy Merton relates this "monastic" dimension of Bonhoeffer's thought to his imprison­ Day and the Catholic Worker movement) with being at the root of U.S. Catholic in­ ment: "Bonhoeffer, regarded as an opponent of all that monasticism stands for, him­ volvement in work for peace and justice; see particularly 76: "Here it was the prob­ self realized the need for certain 'monastic' conditions in order to maintain a true ing mind of Thomas Merton that provided the hermeneutic for the spirituali ty perspective in and on the world. He developed these ideas when he was awaiting taking place in Dan Berrigan, Jim Forest, Jim Douglas [sic] and others. In retreats at his execution in a Nazi prison" (7-8). Reflecting on Bonhoeffer's Ethics in his Gethsemane [sic], through his writings and voluminous correspondence, Merton Working Notebook #16, from the second half of 1965, Merton writes, "The monk origi­ helped to form a spirituality that transformed prayer into protest, contemplation nally broke out of the clerical 'space' of the Church. To roam in the desert, the ulti­ into resistance to the powers and principalities of a murderous world.... Thus, in mate of the world, the place relegated to the devil-to restore the desert to condition the monastic spirituality of Thomas Merton, traditional Christian rejection of 'this of paradise-by showing it is not a space belonging to the devil. This is the real spirit world' took on new and concrete meaning, not as a struggle against flesh and blood, of Vatican li-as opposed to Vat I, etc., when this was not at all dear yet" (48). but as a struggle against the powers and principalities of the great empires, with 5. Contemplation in a World of Action, 239; see also The Inner Experience (VIII): America as their most recent representative. Here monastic spirituality was recon­ "the first monks of all, the Egyptian desert Fathers, the pioneers of the monastic and nected with its apocalyptic root." Ruether goes on to compare this personalistic, contemplative lives, were lay people" (Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 19:4 [1984] 338). In "prophetic" stance with the more praxis-oriented, Marxist-influenced approach A History of Christian Spirituality I: The Spirituality of the New Testament and tire Fathers found in Latin America and elsewhere (what would come to be known as liberation (1960; trans. Mary P. Ryan [London: Bums & Oates, 1963]), Louis Bouyer writes: "The theology), using each to critique what she perceives as the shortcomings of the other. monk was simply a Christian, and, more precisely, a devout layman, who limited 38 Patrick O'Connell "What f Wear ls Pants" 39 a separation from the wider Church, but simply that the monk's partici­ mark of primitive monasticism. "In the earliest days of desert monas­ pation in the Church does not consist in fulfilling a specific organiza­ ticism," Merton writes, "there were no vows, no written rules, and in­ tional role.6 "Christian solitude," Merton emphasizes, is "essentially an stitutional structure was kept at a minimum. The monastic expression of the mystery of the Church, even when in some sense it im­ commitment was taken with extreme and passionate seriousness, but plies a certain freedom from institutional structures."7 But this "freedom this commitment was not protected by judicial sanctions or by institu­ is never a freedom from the Church but always a freedom in the Church tional control."9 Monastic formation depended on personal authority, and a contribution to the Church's own charismatic heritage."8 "the charismatic authority of wisdom, experience and love,"10 rather This charismatic dimension, the willingness to be led, like Jesus, than formal office, on relationships rather than regulations: "There by the Spirit into the desert, to allow all familiar roles and usual com­ was strict obedience on the part of the novice who sought to reproduce forts and securities to be stripped away so that God alone might be in his own life all the actions and thoughts of his spiritual master or 'spir­ one's sole protection and child of God one's only identity, was the hall- itual father.' But the spiritual father had been chosen freely because of his own experience and his evident charism of renunciation and vision."11 himself to taking the most radical means to make his Christianity integral" (317). In Of course such a situation could not continue indefinitely, and his authoritative history of early monasticism, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the the institutionalization of monasticism was both inevitable and neces­ Study of Egyptia11 and Palesti11ian Mo11asticism 1111der the Christian Empire (Oxford: sary, as Merton himself recognized, noting that "it must be admitted Blackwell, 1966), Derwas J. Chitty likewise refers to the lay character of early monas­ ticism: about the first major figure of monasticism, he writes, "Antony was an illiter­ that communal structures have a value that must not be underesti­ ate layman, and the majority of the Egyptian monks were much the same" (86), and mated."12 But he also consistently maintained that the structure was for summarizes, "At the beginning of that period, the monastic movement was a new the sake of the charism, not vice versa. To equate monasticism simply enterprise, a lay movement with no literature but Holy Scripture-a determination, in renunciation of the world, to live the full evangelical life, whether in solitude or community" (179). (Merton was familiar with both these works: Bouyer is cited in the 9. Ibid., 191-2; see also Merton's Introduction to The Wisdom of tlie Desert 1961 no\·itiate lectures, Notes 011 Ascetical and Mystical Theology, 23 and passim; Chitty (New York: New Directions, 1960): "An Abbot was not then, as now, a canonically is quoted on 135 of Worki11g Notebook #24, from late May, 1967.) elected superior of a community, but any monk or hermit who had been tried by 6. See the opening words of the Preface to Louis Bouyer's The Meaning of years in the desert and proved himself a servant of God" (15). In A History of Christian the Monastic Life, trans. Kathleen Pond (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1955), a work that Spirituality/, Bouyer writes: "Later on, the canonists would tend to see [monasticism] Merton himself ca lled "fundamental" and "standard" (Thomas Merton, Tire School only as a state of life, defined once for all by the vows. But at this stage, the vows were of Charity: Letters on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction, ed. Patrick Hart, still unknown and the monastic life seemed, on the contrary, to be a commitment to 0.C.S.O. [New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1990] 119, 145): "The purpose of this detachments and correlative ascents which were to have no end here below" (308). book is primarily to point out to monks that their vocation in the Church is not, and 10. The Wisdom of the Desert, 5; in Contemplatio11 in a World of Action, Merton never has been, a special vocation. The vocation of the monk is, but is no more than, cites the teaching of Antony: "There was nothing to which they had to 'conform' the vocation of the baptized man. But it is the vocation of the baptized man carried, except the secret, hidden, inscrutable will of God.... It is very significant that ... I would say, to the farthest limits of its irresistible demands" (ix); see likewise the the authority of St. Anthony is adduced for what is the basic principle of desert life: statements on page 13: "monastic life is nothing else, no more and no less, than a that God is the authority and that apart from His manifest will there are few or no Christian life whose Christianity has penetrated every part of it. It is a Christian life principles" (6--7). which is completely open, without refusal or delay, to the Word, which opens itself 11. Contemplation in a World of Action, 192 (see also 271); in A History of and abandons itself to it"; and page 22: "To be a monk, then, is simply to be an in­ Christian Spirituality I, Bouyer writes: "In the beginning, ... the superior, or more tegral Christian." Merton himself writes, "The monk is not defined by his task, his precisely, the 'abbot,' that is, the spiritual father, was not a personage endowed usefulness. In a certain sense he is supposed to be 'useless' because his mission is with an official function: he was simply the perfected spiritual man. The anchorite not to do this or that but to be a man of God. He does not live in order to exercise a whose anchoritism had been fruitful, so to say, made no difficulties about allowing specific function: his business is life itself" (Contemplation in a World of Action, 7). other men to join him and consented willingly to communicate to them everything 7. Co11te111platio11 in a World of Action, 251; for Merton, "to be called to a to­ he had received in solitude. The 'abbots', whose sayings and the examples that il­ tally different mode of existence, outside of secular categories and outside of the reli­ lustrate them are collected in the Apophthegms, were precisely this" (321). gious establishment ... is the very heart of monasticism" (23). 12. Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (1969; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 8. Contemplation in a World of Action, 251. Image, 1971) 28; see also Contemplation in a World of Action, 17, 25. 40 Patrick O'Connell "What I Wear Is Pants" 41

with adherence to a rule is to confuse means with ends, for the purpose from the world became open to the world in a new and special way."15 of monastic life is to serve as a solitary witness to the essentially paschal Though the movement was "tamed," as it were, by the thirteenth cen­ character of Christian discipleship, conformity not to a system or to an tury, 16 and "absorbed back into monasticism," its spirit continued to re­ official function but to the person of Christ: "His loneliness had a main alive in such forms as the early Cistercian lay brotherhood, which prophetic and mysterious quality, something almost in the nature of a "had something of an eremitical as well as a distinctly 'lay' character,"17 sacramental sign, because it was a particular charismatic way of par­ especially for those brothers who spent long periods of time in solitude ticipating in the death and resurrection of Christ. ... To confront the on monastic lands outside the enclosure. But the most significant heirs emptiness, the void, the apparent hopelessness of this desert and to en­ of this charism were the early Franciscans, "nonmonastic and com­ counter there the miracle of new life in Christ, the joy of eschatological pletely open to the world of the poor and outcast,"18 who were never­ hope already fulfilled in mystery-this was the monastic vocation."13 theless, in Merton's judgement, the genuine exemplars in the Middle 1 As he considered the history of religious life, Merton discovered Ages of "the authentic freedom of early monasticism." q Merton sug­ repeated instances of a return to this more charismatic, lay-oriented ap­ gests "that actually the ideal of St. Francis was more purely nwnastic in proach, typically associated with a more eremitic style of life. The tenth­ the true original primitive sense than the life lived by the big century hermit movement is an impressive example of this renewal of Benedictine and Cistercian commmunities of the thirteenth century the primitive monastic vision, which arose, as it would have to, outside where everything was so highly organized behind walls."20 It is worth the confines of institutional monasticism: "Lay people or secular clerics noting in this connection that Francis and many of his first followers began to withdraw directly into solitude without passing through a pe­ were never ordained priests, that they claimed no name but Christian riod of monastic formation. Living in the woods and developing as best and no status butfratres 111i11ores, lesser brothers. they could their own mode of life, they remained in rather close contact Thus when Merton refers to himself offhandedly in a letter to with the poor (that is, generally speaking, with their own class), with Ruether as "a tramp and not much else"21 he is actually laying claim to outlaws and outcasts and with the itinerants who were always numer­ a rich heritage of witness to the priority of Gospel to Law. When he ous in the Middle Ages."14 By their very withdrawal from the accepted tells the fellows at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, roles of society, whether civil or ecclesial, these solitaries were para­ just before departing for Asia, that "the monk should not be a priest," doxically united in solidarity with those marginalized by the prevailing and even says, "I should not be a priest," adding, "I didn't want to be social structure: "Closely identified as the hermits were with the un­ a priest, but it was part of the system, so I became one,"22 this should derprivileged, the oppressed and those for whom the official institu­ tions of society showed little real concern, the nonmonastic hermitage 15. Contemplation in a World of Action, 261. quickly became a place of refuge for the desperately perplexed who 16. But see Merton's comments on the non-monastic hermits of fourteenth­ sought guidance and hope-if not also a hiding place and physical century England, of whom Richard Rolle is the most famous example (Conte111plntion safety. Thus the nonmonastic hermit by the very fact of his isolation in a World of Action, 302). 17. fbid., 262. 18. Ibid., 263. 13. Contemplation in a World of Action, 239 (see also 10). 19. Ibid., 358. 14. lbid., 261; Merton specifically mentions "the very significant lay-hermit 20. Ibid. movement in the eleventh-century-lay solitaries who were also itinerant preachers to 21. Hidden Ground of Love, 501; At Home 111 the World, 24. the poor and to the outcasts who had no one to preach to them" in his March 9, 1967 22. Thomas Merton, Preview of the Asian ]011mey, ed. Walter H. Capps (New letter to Ruether (Hidden Ground of Love, 504; At Home in the World, 37). Paradoxically, York: Crossroad, 1989) 49; see also the reference in Co11templatio11 ill a World of Action Merton notes in a February 26, 1966 entry in his Reading Notebook #17, the hermit to the "Primitive Benedictine" foundations that returned to "a community of movement eventually became a catalyst for monastic ordination: "Historical point­ simple monks in one class, only a few of whom were priests" (11). In Working ordination of monks to priesthood became very common in 11th-12th centuries pre­ Notebook #14 (undated, but evidently from the mid-1960s since it includes drafts of cisely in view of hermit life. Priest-hermit considered his mass primarily as the poems that would be incorporated into Cables to the Ace), Merton quotes from an perfect means of uniting his sacrifice-passion with the Passion of Christ" (88). unpublished conference given by Edward Schillebeekx: "Monasticism is not situ- 42 Patrick O'Connell "What 1 Wear ls Pants" 43

be interpreted, I think, not as a rejection or denigration of his own ing attention to the "lay" character of his life as a hermjt, then, Merton priesthood, which continued to be an integral and valued part of his was not expressing a simple rejection of monasticism but claiming the spirituality throughout the hermitage years and right up to the time of recovery of an important strand of authentic monastic and religious life. his death, but as the recognition of a confusion of roles, an institution­ alizing of the charismatic, a clericalizing of what was originally and es­ II sentially a lay movement.23 As he explained during this dialogue, "The monk is a layperson in the desert, who is not incorporated into the hi­ To affirm the "lay" dimension of monasticism is therefore to re­ erarchy. The monk has nothing to do with the establishment."24 In call- sist the temptation to equate one's identity with one's role, one's worth with one's status, the meaning of one's life with one's office. It means ated on a functional level, either lay or priestly. It is solely a taking after God. And the rejection of all idealized projections and socially acceptable images in the measure that monks lose sight of this & accept an apostolic ministry, in the of oneself, including even the image of monk. "The monk does not measure that they seek to found a monastic life on the priesthood & to orient their come into the desert to reinforce his own ego-image, but to be deliv- spirituality in this way, then monks deviate from their state, deviate from monasti­ cism. And so the Church is at the same time more & more deprived of a state of which she has great need-pure monasticism" (75). 23. In Tlze Meaning of tlze Monastic Life, Bouyer writes: "U, in fact, at the present priests for sacramental life of community" (#8); "Hence monks wanted a holy Abba day, monks have become an important part of the clergy, such a circumstance, what­ to be also ordained priest-since he already exercised spiritual authority" (#9); ever proportions it may assume, remains accidental. All great monastic legislators, "Still-in west the priest-abbot not common; certainly still doubtful that St Benedict from St Benedict downwards, pass it over" (5); he later refers to the "gibe" found in consented to ordination" (#10). De Vogiie's overall position, very similar to that of the apophthegms of the desert fathers: "the two kinds of persons whom the monk Bouyer in The Meaning of the Monastic Life, is that monasticism is essentially a lay must flee more than all others, it is said humorously, are bishops and women" (133; rather than a clerical vocation: "Priesthood and monasticism are two different things. Merton himself refers to "Desert Fathers" who "fled from bishops" in his correspon­ The former is ordained for the government of the people of God, the latter consists dence with Ronald Roloff, O.S.B. in The School of Charity [155]); on a more serious note of a break with the present world. . . . Monasticism is therefore in line with baptism. Bouyer cites the teaching of the great Eastern Fathers: "we have only to read St John It is nothing else but a supreme effort to die with Christ and live in him, in other Chrysostom's De Sacerdote, or, if you prefer, the correspondence and poems of St words to realize daily the sacramental action of baptism. It can therefore be said that Gregory Nazianzen to discover how acute the conflict created by a priestly vocation monasticism is in line with the function of the laity. Not only is it not confined to cler­ superimposed upon a monastic vocation, appeared to them" (165). Chitty notes that ics, but the tendency to solitude, which defines its nature, runs counter in principle "Both Antony and Pachomius avoided ordination" and cites Pachomius' custom of to the pastoral vocation of the priest" (Adalbert de Vogiie, Community and Abbot in the "caU[ing] in a priest of one of the neighbouring churches, not wishing any of the Rule of St Benedict, trans. Charles Philippi & Ethel Rae Perkins, 2 vols., Cistercian brethren to seek ordination-for . . . 'the beginning of the thought of love of com­ Studies Series 5 [Kalamazoo, Ml: Cistercian Publications, 1988] 2:294-5). De Vogue mand is ordination"' (Tlze Desert a City, 31, 23); see also the anecdotes of Macari us, who concludes his chapter by noting the relevance of this distinction between cleric and "moved to another village to escape enrol[I]ment in the clergy," and of Peter of Iberia, monk for contemporary monastic renewal: "the Rule provides a place for priesthood who, "getting wind" of plans to ordain him, "jumped down from a roof ... and es­ only in cases of real necessity. The priest-monk, far from constituting the ideal type caped" (temporarily, as it turned out) (13, 87); Merton translates a slightly different of monk, is conceived rather as an anomaly, fraught with danger, but inevitable, of version of the former story as the last of the sayings in Tlze Wisdom oftlze Desert (79--81); which efforts are made to mitigate the inconveniences by means of severe warnings. see also the story of Abbot Isaac's efforts to avoid ordination (thwarted by an ass!) (65). In our day, in a completely changed situation, these inconveniences no longer make 24. Preview of the Asian journey, 49. Merton's most extensive consideration of themselves felt, but if the practice of general ordination to the priesthood has brought early monasticism and ordination comes in Reading Notebook #57, in his notes on the about their cessation, it has also created new difficulties, which the Benedictine Rule sixth chapter of Adalbert de Vogiie's I.A Communaute et /'Abbe dans la Regle de saint was not able to foresee. So it is true that monasticism, on the whole, cannot renounce ~en~it (Paris-Brussels: Desclee-de-Brouwer, 1961); Merton summarizes de Vogiie's its lay character without casting a slur on one of the essential features of its vocation" findmgs that both the Benedictine Rule and the earlier Regula Magistri are "suspi­ (Community and Abbot, 2:303). Given Merton's extensive notes on this work, read in cious of priests" within the monastery, and goes on to abstract eleven points drawn the early 1960s (Reading Notebook #57 is undated, but the article cited immediately fo l­ from the chapter, with extensive citation of primary sources, including: "Monks fly lowing the notes on de Vogiie was published in 1963), it is highly probable that it from priesthood as an honor ... and as a distraction" (#5); "Refusals to cooperate in served as the principal source for Merton's comments on monasticism and priest­ ordination or in exercise of priestly functions" (#6); "However-need of monastic hood, and indeed on the specifically lay character of monasticism in general. 44 Patrick O'Connell "What 1 Wear Is Pants" 45

ered from it."25 Merton finds the truth of this insight exemplifed in one nature of the monastic life, insofar as it is not "clerical," not provided of the stories of the Desert Fathers, in which a restless apprentice monk with a definite niche in the ecclesial structure, testifies to the freedom of asks permission to go visit the sick, but is told by his spiritual father, the Christian. Contrary to Luther's critique, however accurate it may his abbn, to stay put in his cell. A clue to the meaning of the story, have been in the historical circumstances of his time,28 monasticism is in­ Merton notes, is the Greek word used for visiting the sick, episkopein, tended to be a sign of sheer grace, of salvation by faith not works, by a with its connotations of superiority and condescension: "'looking person not a system. According to Merton, "The monastic vocation is tra­ them over as if one were a bishop' we would be inclined to say."26 It is ditionally regarded as a charism of liberty in which the monk does not a story about trying to find oneself, to affirm one's own worth, by simply tum his back on the world, but on the contrary becomes free with adopting a conventionally approved role; the young man's motive for the perfect freedom of the sons of God by virtue of the fact that, having performing a work of charity, however admirable in itself, is to feel followed Christ into the wilderness and shared in His temptations and good about himself, but the wise elder refuses to allow his disciple to sufferings, he can also follow Him wherever else He may go." 29 Such take refuge in this self-deception. Merton comments, freedom is risky, because it places the monk in the desert, "where these­ cure routines of man's city offer no support,"30 but it is precisely from Afflicted with boredom and hardly knowing what to do with him­ these "secure routines," which stifle vitality and creativity and try to do­ self, the disciple represents to himself a more fruitful and familiar mesticate the Spirit that blows where it wills, that one needs to be liber­ way of life, in which he appears to himself to "be someone" and ated: "The world needs men who are free from its demands, men who to have a fully recognizable and acceptable identity, a "place in the 31 is, Church," but the Elder tells him that his place in the Church will are not alienated by its servitudes in any way." The monk or should never be found by following these ideas and images of a plausible be, such a person. In his final talk in Bangkok, Merton goes so far as to identity. Rather it is found by traveling a way that is new and dis­ define a monk as "essentially someone who takes up a critical attitude to­ concerting because it has never been imagined by us before, or at ward the world and its structures, .. . somebody who says, in one way least we have never conceived it as useful or even credible for a or another, that the claims of the world are fraudulent."32 true Christian-a way in which we seem to lose our identity and Here, of course, the prophetic, counter-cultural dimension of become nothing.27 the monastic life is evident. The monk "retains the eschatological privi­ lege and duty of smashing idols-worldly, ecclesiastical, secular and The truth, of course, is that the self constructed according to social even monastic"33 because his detachment from all that is provisional norms is not the self created in the image of God, and that false self must d ie in order for the authentic self, the mysterious, hidden iden­ and secondary allows him "to gaze steadily at the whole truth of 34 tity known only to its Creator, to emerge. To call a monk a "lay" Christ" and so to reject the absolute claims that any institution or Christian is to recognize that at least one essential aspect of the mo­ structure or authority makes about itself. The monk is one "who at nastic vocation is to be a standing warning that the very notion of an once loves the world yet stands apart from it with a critical objectivity "official" Christian, a "professional" Christian, is in grave danger of which refuses to become involved in its transient fashions and its more confusing ou tward function with inner identity; it risks substituting manifest absurdities."35 Hence Merton's description in Calcutta of the appearance for reality. Both the cleric and the non-monastic lay person ~eed the monk as a salutary reminder that to be a Christian, a disciple, 28. See Ibid., 181-6, and 360--1, for a discussion of Luther and monasticism. is not a matter of playing a role or of filling an office but of committing 29. Ibid., 227 (see also 360--1). one's entire life to the person of Jesus. 30. Contemplative Prayer, 27. This "lay" character also has a liberating aspect to it: the monk is 31. Contemplation in a World of Action, 227. not confined to a fixed role, a limited set of duties or obligations. The very 32. Thomas Merton, The Asian /011ma/, ed. Naomi Burton, Patrick Hart and James Laughlin (New York: New Directions, 1973) 329. 25. Co11te111platio11 i11 a World of Action, 285. 33. Contemplation in a World of Action, 189. 26. Ibid., 254. 34. Ibid., 188. 27. Tbid. 35. Ibid., 227 (see also 8--9, 92-3). 46 Patrick O'Co1111ell "What I Wear Is Pants" 47

monk as "a marginal person, ... essentially outside of all establish­ "What is essential in the monastic life," Merton declared on the last ments,"30 at the periphery of contemporary "mass society" with its ten­ day of his life, "is not embedded in buildings, is not embedded in dency to d epersonalize and dehumanize, yet thereby in a unique clothing, is not necessarily embedded even in a rule. It is . . . something position not simply to withdraw from society but to offer it a chal­ deeper than a rule. It is concerned with this business of total inner lenging and life-affirming critique-the vision of a new humanism transformation. Ail other things serve that end."40 rooted in the dignity of the person as image of God. If from one perspective, that of status, efficiency, productivity, III the monk is marginal, from another he is at the very heart of the human enterprise. "The monk," Merton said in Bangkok, "dwells in It is in this context that Merton's concern for monastic renewal the center of society as one who has attained realization-he ... has must be situated. The perennial temptation of monasticism is to sub­ come to experience the ground of his own being in such a way that he stitute an alternate set of "secure routines" for those of the world, to knows the secret of liberation and can somehow communicate it to make institutional structures rather than charismatic freedom the others."37 In discovering his own true center he is in communion with defining characteristic of monastic life. Comparing the contemporary all other human beings through compassionate identification. The monk with the Desert Fathers, Merton notes: "With us it is often rather monk affirms authentic human values by incarnating them himself a case of men leaving the society of the 'world' in order to fit them­ and by recognizing and defending them in others, especially when selves into another kind of society, that of the religious family which they are threatened or violated. "The monastic life today stands over they enter.... The social 'norms' of a monastic family are also apt to against the world with a mission to affirm not only the message of sal­ be conventional, and to live by them does not involve a leap into the 41 vation but also those most basic human values which the world most void-only a radical change of customs and standards." When mo­ desperately needs to regain: personal integrity, inner peace, authentic­ nastic life becomes a form of security rather than a challenge to risk, to ity, inner depth, spiritual joy, the capacity to love, the capacity to enjoy grow, to die and rise with Christ, it betrays its essential meaning. God's creation and give thanks."38 For Merton there is no conflict be­ An even more serious danger is that "The institution is identi­ 42 tween these common human aspirations and a specifically Christian fied with God, and becomes an end in itself." This is, of course, a and monastic identity and vocation because the central Christian doc­ form of idolatry, in which the basic humanity of the individual is sac­ trines of creation, incarnation and redemption are a repeated, ever rificed to the requirements of the institution: "the monk is given to deepening revelation and affirmation of human dignity. "Monastic understand that there is no alternative for him but to regard this insti­ spirituality today," Merton believes, "must be a personalistic and tutional life in ail its d etail, however arbitrary, however archaic, how­ Christian humanism that seeks and saves man's intimate truth, his ever meaningless to him, as the only way for him to be perfect in love 43 personal identity, in order to consecrate it entirely to God."39 It is more and sincere in his quest for God." The corollary of this approach is essential, in other words, to focus on how monks can contribute to the that the way of the nonmonastic world is often regarded as a corrupt­ full humanization, which is also the divinization, of all people, than to ing system that must be rejected totally, as exemplified, for example, stress what differentiates the monk from "the laity." While the monk by "the rigid, authoritarian, self-righteous, ascetic" monk Ferrapont in participates in the project of human transformation in a unique way, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, "who delivers himself from the the way of solitude and inner exploration, he is nevertheless partici­ world by sheer effort, and then feels qualified to call down curses pating in a project common to the entire laos, all the people of God.

36. Asian ]011ma/, 305. ~O . Asian f 011mal, 340. 37. [bid., 333. 41. Tile Wisdom of tile Desert, 9-10. 38. Conte111plat1011 in a World of Action, 81. 42. Contemplation in a World of Action, 19. 39. !bid., 82. 43. Ibid. 48 Patrick O'Connell "What 1 Wear Is Pants" 49

upon it."44 By denying and rejecting the human element outside the the artificiality of structure and the tyranny of routine, which are of course monastery, one ends by suppressing and rejecting the humanity in the primary source of the disillusion.48 His new life is an affirmation of his oneself and in the monastic community. ordinariness: '"Solitude' becomes for me less and less of a specialty, more While this temptation to reduce monasticism to its formal com­ and more just 'life' itself. I do not seek to 'be a solitary' or anything else, ponents is a perennial one, its consequences are particularly harmful for 'being' anything is a distraction. It is enough to 'be' in an ordinary in the contemporary period w hen the structure and routine are in large human mode with one's hunger and sleep, one's cold and warmth, rising part relics of a past era with very little connection to the monks' for­ and going to bed, putting on blankets and taking them off."49 The sim­ mer, "lay" lives. The problem is merely compounded when "updat­ plicity here may be somewhat misleading. Merton's words echo, perhaps ing" consists in adopting structures and practices of secular society deliberately, D. T. Suzuki's concluding words in his dialogue with Merton tha t are basically depersonalizing: "if the monastery comes to about the Desert Fathers: "Q. What is Tao? (We may take Tao as meaning resemble a big business and a plant surrounded by noise and clatter, the ultimate truth or reality.) A. It is one's everyday mind. Q. What is one's the monks ... w ill tend to be more and more alienated , ta king refuge everyday mind? A. When tired, you sleep; when hungry, you eat." 50 from routines in which they cannot take a serious human interest be­ Merton's response puts the Zen master's paradox in a Christian context: cause they are the same impersonal and organized routines they left in Christianity moves in an essentially historical dimension toward the world."45 Renewal cannot consist merely in the substitution of one the " restoration of all things in Christ." Yet with Christ's conquest set of structures for another: it must "concentrate on the charism of the of death and the sending of the Holy Spirit that restoration has al­ monastic vocation rather than on the structure of monastic institutions or ready been accomplished. What remains is for it to be made mani­ 46 the patterns of monastic observance." The recollection and recovery of fest .... To one who has seen it, the most obvious thing is to do the "lay" dimen sion of monastic history and identity function as a what Dr. Suzuki suggests: to live one's ordinary life. In the words check on the tendency of structure to replace charism; it counteracts of the first Christians, to praise God and to take one's food "in the tempta tion to substitute for a life of authentic human freedom a simplicity of heart." The simplicity referred to here is the complete closed, self-sufficient "societas perfecta" which replaces and judges life absence of all legalistic preoccupation about right and wrong in "the world ." ways of living. "When tired you sleep, when hungry you eat."51

In this attentiveness to the ordinary, this mindfulness, revelation ap­ IV pears in the most unexpected places, as in the lovely final entry of A Vow of Conversation, the journal of Merton's entry into solitude, when Merton's hermitage is a response to the dilemma of contemporary Merton sees deer grazing near the hermitage: monasticism, which is of course his own dilemma as well. "Doubtless," he writes, "this can be seen as a perfecting of my monastic life and also as a 48. In Contemplation in a World of Action Merton notes that Dom Jacques final disillusionment with monastic life."47 Ironically, it is a perfecting pre­ Winandy proposes a canonical separation of the eremitical life from the religious cisely by its recovery of some degree of the primitive "lay" freedom from state, bringing it "closer to the lay state than to the status of religious or of monk" (295); while he himself is concerned, both theoretically and practically, "with the possibility of a renewal of eremitism within the religious state itself" (Ibid.), his 44. Contemplative Prayer, 28 (Merton ca lls Dostoevsky's monk "Therapont" recognition of the ambiguities of the hermit's position relative to the monastic com­ here); it is Ferrapont's opposite, the Staretz Zossima, "the kind, compassionate man of munity allows him both to define the hermit as "the monk par excellence" (296) prayer who identifies himself with the sinful world in order to ca ll down God's bless­ and to call the "hermit life ... expressly a lay life" (Hidden Ground of Love, 501; At ing upon it," and whose "monastic spirit is charismatic rather than institutional," Home in the World, 23). whom Merton sees as the model "in the present era of monastic renewal" (28). 49. Vow of Conversation, 192; for a slightly different version of this passage 45. Contemplation in a World of Action, 81. see Dancing in the Water of Life, 257. 46. Ibid., 14. 50. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 47. Vow of Conversation, 190; for a slightly different version of this passage, 1968) 134. see Dancing i11 the Water of Life, 256. 51. Ibid., 138. SO Patrick O'Connell "What I Wear ls Pants" 51

The thing that struck me most-when you look at them directly v and in movement, you see what the primitive cave painters saw. Something you never see in a photograph. It is most awe­ Probably the most appealing, and most revealing, description inspiring. The muntu or the "spirit" is shown in the running of the of the "lay" character of Merton's solitary life is found in his essay deer. The "deerness" that sums up everything and is sacred and "Day of a Stranger," originally written, he tells us, "in answer to a re­ marvelous. A contemplative intuition, yet this is perfectly ordi­ quest from a South American editor to describe a 'typical day' in my nary, everyday seeing-what everybody ought to see all the time. life."54 The day chosen was in May 1965 when Merton was on the The deer reveals to me !'>omething essential, not only in itself, but threshold of his permanent removal to the hermitage, and the essay re­ also in myself. Something beyond the trivialities of my everyday veals the essential elements of the life of solitude as Merton had al­ being, my individual existence. Something profound. The face of ready begun to experience it. In describing his d ay Merton clearly that which is both in the deer and in myself.52 intends that the distinctions between lay and religious, monastic and In this experience is the proof that the Tao is indeed one's everyday mind, nonmonastic be relativized and transcended. His life is presented as a that the mystery of reality is hidden in the depths of the ordinary, that the unique way of experiencing a common humanity. contemplative vision is available to all, though few will notice. The gift of At least five dimensions of this life that integrate him with the the hermitage for Merton himself, and his gift to others, is this overcom­ world shared with the rest of humanity are interwoven throughout the ing of the dichotomy between the everyday and the transcendent. essay. Most immediately apparent is the question of his own identity, in The voice of God is not clearly heard at every moment; and part of evident even the title, where the word "stranger" might initially sug­ the "work of the cell" is attention, so that one may not miss any gest someone whose way of life is strange or exotic, but which eventu­ sound of that voice. What this means, therefore, is not only atten­ ally takes on the connotations of one who doesn't "fit in," whose tion to inner grace but to external reality and to one's self as a com­ identity cannot be defined by a public role, a recognized place in society pletely integrated part of that reality. Hence, this implies also a at large or monastic society in particular-cannot in fact be defined at fo rgetfulness of oneself as totally apart from outer objects, stand­ all. Merton takes pains to dispel the impression of strangeness in the ing back from outer objects; it demands an integration of one's first sense by emphasizing that in fundamental ways his life is no dif­ own life in the stream of natural and human and cultural life of the ferent from anybody else's. He pointedly and humorously demytholo­ moment.53 gizes any mystique of the monk as superior to or set apart from It demands a reappropriation of the fundamentally human capacity to ordinary people: "This is not a hermitage-it is a house. ('Who was that encounter the sacred in the midst of the ordinary, which is authentically hermitage 1 seen you with last night?... ') What I wear is pants. What but not exclusively monastic. Far from isolating him from the rest of hu­ I do is live. How I pray is breathe."55 But this very ordinariness protects manity, Merton's move to the hermitage had the effect of attuning him more sensitively and perceptively to the common needs and aspira­ tions of every person, which he experienced in himself. The paradox of 54. Quoted by Robert E. Daggy in his Introduction to Thomas Merton, Day Merton's last years, which found him at once seeking and finding of a Stranger (Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, 1981) 7; all references will be to this greater solitude and more in touch with the political, social and cultural edition, but the essay can also be found in A Thomas Merton Reader, revised edition, crises of the time, is resolved in his existential awareness of this inte­ ed. Thomas P. McDonnell (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday lmage, 1974) 431-8, and gration of self and world as complementary, interpenetrating signs and in T/10111as Merton: Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham (New York: Paulis!, 1992) 214-22. It should be noted that the final ver­ instruments of the divine presence, concealed in plain sight. sion of this essay, as found in these sources, is considerably revised and expanded from the initial draft, now available in Dancing in the Water of Life, 239-42 (for a 52. Vow of Conversation, 208; for a slightly different version of this passage, helpful discussion of the successive drafts, see the Introduction to Day of a Stranger, see Dancing in the Water of Life, 291. 17-21 ). Much of the material quoted in the following discussion was added by 53. Vow of Conversation, 189; an ea rlier, less developed version of this passage Merton in the process of revision; exceptions will be cited in the notes. is found in Dancing in the Waler of Life, 255. 55. Day of a Stranger, 41; see the similar language in Merton's March 9, 1967 52 Patrick O'Connell "What l Wear Is Pants" 53

56 and nurtures the mystery of identity. As he had not yet been relieved Rituals. Washing out the coffee pot in the rain bucket. Approaching of the office of novice master, he still had a "public" self, but this does the outhouse with circumspection on account of the king snake ~ot constitute his deepest, truest identity: "I have duties, obligations, who likes to curl up on one of the beams inside. Addressing the smce here I am a monk. When I have accomplished them, I return to the possible king snake in the outhouse and informing him that he woods where I am n obody." 57 Like "all the silent Tzu's and Fu's" that should not be in there. Asking the formal ritual question that is surround him in spirit, he is a "[man] without office and without obli­ asked at this time every morning: "Are you in there, you bastard?" gation,"58 whose identity cannot be defined by what he does, or how More rituals. Spray bedroom (cockroaches and mosquitoes). Close society classifies him: "I live in the woods as a reminder that I am free all the windows on south side (heat). Leave windows open on not to be a number."59 His deepest identity is hidden even from himself, north and east sides (cool). Leave windows open on west side until maybe June when it gets very hot on all sides. Pull down shades. and does not become available through introspective self-examination: Get water bottle. Rosary. Watch. Library book to be retumed.61 "In an age when there is much talk about 'being yourself' I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is A passage such as this is a reminder that grace builds on nature but little chance of my being anybody else. Rather it seems to me that when does not replace it. Human life is inescapably incarnate, fleshly, and one is too intent on 'being himself' he runs the risk of impersonating a part of the value of even the most ordinary activities is to keep one shadow."60 His identity remains a mystery, but the mystery is consti­ rooted in concrete actuality, to guard against the fatal self-deception tuted not by his being a hermit, but because he is a human being. His that the "religious" person lives on a different plane of reality from 62 life is a reminder to others that they too are free not to be numbers, that everyone else. In performing his "rituals," Merton is attuned to the they too risk impersonating shadows, but are not inevitably doomed to rhythms of the day-closing the south windows as the sun rises while leaving north and east windows open for cross-ventilation-and the do so. His life is a sign that no one's life is, in essence, or should be, in rhythms of the season-leavin g west windows open until the heats of practice, reduced to the function they perform or the role they play. June. There is a sense of correspondence with the natural patterns of This rejection of a superior, esoteric existence is reinforced by time-the watch is picked up only when he is ready to make his daily t~e attention ?aid to the ordinary rhythms and routines of everyday trip down to the monastery. At the same time, the presence of cock­ hfe, from which the hermit is not exempt. Merton deliberately, and roaches and mosquitoes (not to mention the king snake) makes clear slyly, uses the term "rituals," with its associations with religious rites, that the hermitage is no idyllic, edenic, self-enclosed world; it is part of to describe the most "secular" of activities, not excluding even a visit the normal, ambiguous environment in which all people find them­ to the outdoor privy: selves, and so signifies an inevitable yet freely accepted solidarity with the human condition. Yet there is something different as well, at least l ett~r to Ruether: "All you do is breathe and look around and wash dishes, type, etc. from the standard middle-class experience and expectation. If the her­ Or JUSt listen to the birds" (Hidden Ground of Love, 502-3; At Home in the World, 34). mit participates in routines common to all, he is also a sign of contra­ 56. See Merton's Introduction to Tile Wisdom of tile Desert: "These monks in­ diction to the busyness, the noise, the technological gadgetry taken for ~isted o_n remaining human and 'ordinary.' This may seem to be a paradox, but it granted in contemporary society but in fact not necessary at all. is very rmportant. If we reflect a moment, we will see that to fly into the desert in "Washing out the coffee pot in the rain bucket" reminds those who rely order to be extraordinary is only to carry the world with you as an implicit stand­ on the dishwasher, or even on hot and cold running water, that full hu­ ard of comparison .... The simple men who Jived their Jives out to a good old age manity does not depend on access to the latest conveniences. Both fa­ among the rocks and sands only did so because they had come into the desert to be miliar and unfamiliar, the hermit's rituals are not a glorification of the themselves, their ordinary selves, and to forget a world that divided them from primitive-Merton was quite grateful when modern plumbing and themselves. There can be no other valid reason for seeking solitude" (22-3). electricity arrived at the hermitage-but a subtle admonition not to 57. Day of a Stranger, 57; for an earlier version of this passage, see Dancing in the Water of Life, 241. 58. Day of a Stranger, 63. 61. Ibid., 53. 59. Ibid., 31. 60. fbid. 62 . .In Co11te111platio11 i11 a World of Action, Merton writes, "Transformation is not a repudiation of ordinary life but its definitive recovery in Christ" (100). 54 Patrick O'Connell "What I Wear Is Pants" 55 absolutize the relative, not to confuse the natural with the artificial, the soon be dawn. In an hour or two the towns will wake, and men will necessary with the optional. enjoy everywhere the great luminous smiles of production and busi­ This passage already suggests a third aspect of this "lay" exis­ ness."61> Like the birds, the hermit is attuned to other rhythms than tence, immersion in the natural world in all its concrete particularity. those presented by the commercial world. He is sensitive not .only to Merton locates himself in a setting that is not reducible to a set of map­ clironos, clock-time, but to kniros, the decisive moment of revelation and maker's coordinates: it is "in Kentucky" but that is not its essential transfiguration: "It is necessary for me to see the first point of light defining characteristic: "Do I have a 'day'? Do I spend my 'day' in a which begins to be dawn. It is necessary to be present alone at the 'place'? I know there are trees here. I know there are birds here. I know resurrection of Day, in the black silence when the sun appears. In this the birds in fact very well, for there are precise pairs of birds (two each completely neutral instant I receive from the Eastern woods, the tall of fifteen or twenty species) living in the immediate area of my cabin. oaks, the one word 'DAY,' which is never the same. It is never spoken I share this particular place with them: we form an ecological balance. in any human language."67 This responsiveness to nature is not ~­ This harmony gives the idea of 'place' a new configuration."63 There is tended to substitute for or to exclude human contact. Rather, m a sense of respect here, a recognition that the trees and birds were in Merton's view, the ecological balance of his physical environment pro­ this place before he was and will continue to be there when he is no vides a pattern for "a mental ecology too, a living balance of spirits in more; therefore it is his responsibility not to impose his pattern on this corner of the woods. There is room here for many other songs than them but to become aware of and participate in their pattern, their har­ those of birds," voices of poets singing in many languages, voices of mony. This relationship is humorously expressed later in the essay in eastern sages and western Church Fathers, voices of Hebrew prophets the delightful variation on St. Francis' sermon to the birds: '"Esteemed and "feminine voices from Angela of Foligno to Flannery O'Connor, friends, birds of noble lineage, I have no message to you except this: be Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, and, more personally and warmly what you are: be birds. Thus you will be your own sermon to your­ still, Raissa Maritain."68 The natural world provides a context in which selves!' Reply: 'even this is one sermon too many!'" 64 It is not the birds the wisdom of the human world can be properly heard and appreci­ but the preacher who needs to hear and heed the instruction "be what ated: "It is good to choose the voices that will be heard in these woods, you are," which could in fact be considered the sermon of the birds. but they also choose themselves, and send themselves here to be pres­ This appreciation of harmony does not exclude an awareness of ent in this silence."69 dissonance in nature, a sense that it too participates in some way in the But the human world penetrates the hermit's existence not only fallenness of creation. "As to the crows," Merton notes, "they form through the insights of artists and visionaries. A fourth element of part of a different pattern. They are vociferous and self-justifying, like Merton's life in the hermitage that is shared with all humanity is the humans. They are not two, they are many. They fight each other and necessity to confront the dilemmas of social and political life. Merton the other birds, in a constant state of war."65 But if nature at times par­ frames his essay with references to airplanes. After a sardonic opening allels the conflicts and confusion of the human world (and so serves as paragraph on the pseudo-mystical elevation of modem jets, in which an object lesson undermining the pretensions and posturing of human arrogance), it also stands as a sign of contradiction to the getting and 66. Day of a Stranger, 45. spending in which the great world looks to find its meaning. Birds and 67. Ibid., 51; for an earlier version of this passage, see Dancing in the Water of business are on different schedules: "The birds begin to wake. It will Life, 241. Merton writes to Ruether, "One of the things I love about my Life, and, therefore, one of the reasons why I would not change it for anything, is the fact that I live in the woods and according to a tempo of sun and moon and season in which 63. Day of a Stranger, 33; for an earlier version of this passage, see Dancing in it is naturally easy and possible to walk in God's light, so to speak, in and through the Water of Life, 239. his creation" (Hidden Ground of Love, 502; At Home in tire World, 34). 64. Day of a Stranger, 51. 68. Day of a Stranger, 35; for an earlier version of this passage, see Dancing in 65. Ibid., 33; for an earlier version of this passage, see Dancing in the Water of tire Water of Life, 239-10. Life, 239. 69. Day of a Stranger, 35, 37. "What I Wear ls Pants" 57 56 Patrick O'Connell

passengers are suspended in a moving stillness "with timeless cock­ The final word is mercy, but its power is revealed not by refusing to tails ... contemplation that gets you somewheref"70 he turns to "Other hear the other words but by confronting them, knowing the full extent jets, with other contemplations,"71 the grotesquely perverted mimicry of their ugliness, and refusing to be overwhelmed by them because of "the SAC plane, the metal bird with a scientific egg in its breast!"n one has learned, through no merit of one's own, that there is a deeper, The essay, and the day, end with the same image: "Meanwhile the more lasting reality than hate and death. metal cherub of the apocalypse passes over me in the clouds, treasur­ Though the term is not used, this passage is of course a de- 73 scription of the divine office, as "psalms grow up silently by them­ ing its egg and its message." Merton permits himself and his reader 76 no illusion that withdrawal into solitude means escape from the perils selves without effort in this light which is favorable to them." human society has created for itself: "like everyone else, I live in the Throughout "Day of a Stranger" the explicitly spiritual, religious, shadow of the apocalyptic cherub."74 If there were ever a time when Christian dimension discloses itself unobtrusively, woven into the pat­ the monk had the luxury of ignoring the problems of the wider world, tern of personal identity, of ordinary routines, of natural harmonies, or that time is forever gone. Monks, and even hermits, live in the same as here, of social and political confusions and threats. It is the final in­ world as everyone else, and therefore have the same obligations and tegrating factor that unites the hermit with his brothers and sisters, but responsibilities to defend life and resist the forces of death. The hermit only because it has itself been integrated with the rest of life. It is the is able to address the struggle between light and darkness in society "one central tonic note that is unheard and unuttered" but which because he has experienced that same struggle in his own heart, and makes possible the harmony of all creation, "the consonantia of heat, 77 he is able to articulate a word of hope because he knows that the dark­ fragrant pine, quiet wind, bird song." Viewed in isolation, Merton ness has not finally overcome the light: "the stranger" comments, "Spiritual life is guilt," but when the artifi­ cial separation between worldly and spiritual aspects of life is over­ In the formJessness of night and silence a word then pronounces come, when religion is not restricted to formal rituals at specified itself: Mercy. It is surrounded by other words of lesser conse­ times, all life is recognized as holy: "Up here in the woods is seen the quence: "destroy iniquity," "wash me," "purify," "I know my iniq­ New Testament: that is to say, the wind comes through the trees and uity." Peccavi. Concepts without interest in the world of business you breathe it."78 The divine presence, the pneuma that blows where it war, politics, culture, etc. Concepts also often without interest t~ wills, is as "natural," and as essential, as breathing. ecclesiastics. Other words: Blood. Guile. Anger. The way that is At the heart of the call to solitude is the invitation to recognize not good. The way of blood, guile, anger, war. Out there the hills in the dark lie southward. The way over the hills is blood, guile, and embrace the Love hidden in the depth of all that is real. "One dark, anger, death. Selma, Birmingham, Mississippi. Nearer than might say I had decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet these, the atomic city, from which each day a freight car of fission­ dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife. Out of the able material is brought to be hid carefully beside the gold in the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in si­ underground vault which is at the heart of this nation. "Their lence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the mouth is the opening of the grave; their tongues are set in motion lovers in their beds all over the world."79 The secret is that all particu­ by lies; their heart is void." Blood, lies, fire, hate, the opening of lar loves, in so far as they are authentic, are participations in the one the grave, void. Mercy, great mercy.75 Love; that all particular surrenders are concrete ways of participating in the primal and primary surrender of self to Absolute Reality, the 70. Ibid., 29. 71. Ibid. 76. fbid., 43. 77. Ibid., 61; for an earlier version of this passage, see Dancing in the Water of . 72. fbid., ~1 ; ~e original version of this passage does not use the bird /egg image: see Da11c111g 111 t/ze Water of Life, 239. Life, 242. 73. Day of a Stranger, 63. 78. Day of a Stranger, 41. 74. fbid., 31. 79. Ibid., 49; for an earlier version of this passage, see Dancing in t/1e Water of 75. fbid., 43, 45. Life, 240. 57 58 Patrick O'Connell

Fullness of Truth. It is the assurance of the unity that grounds all di­ versity, the One manifested in the many, the "hidden wholeness" of creation as the epiphany of the divine, what Merton calls Sophia, Holy Wisdom.80 Merton's vocation to solitude is not exclusive but inclusive, not something to distinguish him from others but a sign of the easily overlooked significance of each life and all life. "So perhaps I have an obligation to preserve the stillness, the silence, the poverty, the virginal point of pure nothingness which is at the center of all other loves." This is not an obligation imposed by any institution or required by any rule. It is an expression of charismatic freedom, love responding to Love, heart speaking to Heart. "I attempt to cultivate this plant with­ out comment in the middle of the night and water it with psalms and prophecies in silence. It becomes the most rare of all the trees in the garden, at once the primordial paradise tree, the axis mundi, the cosmic axle, and the Cross. Nulla si/va talem profert. There is only one such tree. It cannot be multiplied."81 There are not, finally, many trees but one Tree, many loves but one Love, many lives but one Life. At this still point, the distinctions between secular and sacred, lay and monastic, are transcended in a contemplative intuition that is also ordinary, everyday awareness of a common humanity,82 sharing the same earth, revolving around the same center, redeemed by the same Cross in order to live the same freedom of the children of God.

80. See Merton's prose poem "Hagia Sophia" in Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems (New York: New Directions, 1977) 363-71; also in A Thomas Merton Reader, 506-11, and Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master, 257-64. The phrase "hidden wholeness" is from the opening sentence of this work. 81. Day of a Stranger, 49; for an earlier version of this passage, see Dancing in the Water of Life, 240. 82. Merton writes to Ruether, "my own small concerns with monasticism may seem completely irrelevant. And I am not defending them. Because they are not just monastic concerns, they are human and universal. What makes it difficult to express this is the fact that, for instance, 'being a hermit' seems to mean trying to be a very peculiar and special kind of artificial man, whereas for me what it means is being nothing but man, or nothing but a mere man reduced to his simple condition as man, that is to say as a non-monk even, a non-layman, a non-catego­ rized man, a plain simple man.... What would seem to others to be the final step into total al ienation seems to me to be the beginning of the resolution of all alien­ ation and the preparation for a real return without masks and without defenses into the world, as mere man" (Hidden Ground of Love, 508; At Home in the World, 46).